Utopian Memory

Utopian Memory

Chapter:

(p.34)
CHAPTER 2 Utopian Memory

Source:

Deleuze and Memorial Culture

Author(s):

Adrian Parr

Publisher:

Edinburgh University Press

DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627547.003.0002

This chapter analyses the concept of the so-called utopian memory. It considers the connection between trauma and remembrance, and suggests that we need to begin to address the authenticity conditioning the truth of memory, and that it is in this authenticity that the utopian force of traumatic memory lies. The chapter argues that the work of memory is implicitly utopian, but only if we use it as a utopian promise-machine. It considers Theodor W. Adorno's view on the affectivity of trauma and Gilles Deleuze's description of the intensive fact of the body.

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